Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, every OT and IT journey is different, but two SMEs from Lincoln Nebraska-based Huffman Engineering join the podcast with some tips and to share some positive summer vibes from their clients.

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Joe Kuhn of Ask a Plant Manager discusses leadership habits that strengthen maintenance and reliability.

Lorraine Martin, CEO of the National Safety Council, explains why the NSC first developed National Safety Month in 1996—and what workplace safety issues they’re focusing on this year. 

In this episode of Great Question, IndustryWeek Senior Editor Laura Putre talks with Frank McKay and Graham Scott, Supply Chain Officer and Chief Procurement Officer at Jabil respectively, about how they transformed procurement to a cost driver at the global contract manufacturer—offering their own optimized supply-chain technology to customers as a service. They also discuss how they’ve tackled recent procurement challenges—such as tariffs and memory constraints in the AI market—and built a pipeline to develop procurement talent.

New Equipment Digest (NED) Editor-in-Chief Laura Davis breaks down five additive manufacturing products from the June issue, spanning multimaterial prototyping, magnesium-capable metal AM, continuous FFF production, ultra-large-format powder bed fusion, and high-performance polymer printing for aerospace.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Plant Services chief editor Thomas Wilk speaks with Andy Foster, Chief Product Officer at IOTech, about the growing use of edge AI across discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, and energy operations. The conversation explores how manufacturers are using AI for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, production optimization, and distributed energy resource management. They also discuss why organizations are moving AI closer to the edge to improve latency, reliability, and data security in mission-critical environments. In addition, the episode examines the evolving governance, lifecycle management, and workforce responsibilities required to safely scale industrial AI systems.

Small and medium-sized manufacturers have a skilled labor shortage - and the last solution proposed to address that (automation and robotics) is about to encounter the next proposed solution: agentic artificial intelligence.  A recent article introduces they interesting possibility that “Agentic AI Could Make Robots Affordable for Small Businesses.”

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, American Machinist's Robert Brooks talks with IndustryWeek's Dennis Scimeca about whether this new approach to programming change how manufacturers program their robots and cobots. Will AI reduce the complexity of implementation, or introduce new risks to their organizations?

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Virginia Tech's E. Scott Geller muses on how workplace safety has improved—and worsened—over his 50-plus year career.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, IndustryWeek's Anna Smith speaks with Ben Johnston, COO at Kapitus, about the new tariff refund portal launched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection following the Supreme Court’s ruling on IEEPA-related tariffs. They discuss how manufacturers, importers, and customs brokers can navigate the refund application process, including key documentation requirements and common filing mistakes to avoid. The conversation also explores the potential financial impact of tariff refunds across the supply chain and the continued uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade policy and future tariff enforcement.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Thomas Wilk meets up with Rosemary Coates of the Reshoring Institute to catch up on how current events are impacting manufacturers who were already shifting their reshoring strategies. Despite geopolitical conflict and energy shortages, Coates identifies are few sectors that are thriving (semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and plastics) and emphasizes the importance of community colleges in preparing workers for a new, more volatile manufacturing normal.